When Alejandro Ginés talks about the pieces that comprise his exhibition EXIT/EXIST, he uses hardly ever refers to them as artworks, instead preferring the term "mechanisms". In Ginés's projects there is always something hidden, something that flees and eludes us, something that is not present—and this explains why mechanisms that come from such a familiar, ordinary, real context still manage to make us uneasy.

These mechanisms of concealment and revelation once again lead us to understand the objects that comprise EXIT/EXIST as poetic images that push different psychological buttons, for they are practically mental archetypes which invite us to rehearse our different escape plans, flight strategies laid out before us as one of the most vital necessities of being. Flee, escape, reach the forest, clear the paths.

We must claim the right to flee, even from ourselves. We must propose spaces in which the right to inhabit is determined not by the conditions of a real mortgage but by the terms of a poetic lease that invites us to dream of places hidden inside a file drawer, of unknown territories that appear beneath a chalkboard covered with beach sand, or of secret regions that can only be reached by climbing a precarious rope ladder like the ones we have all seen in prison break thrillers. Get out, run, escape. Find your own path.

"Tearing down a fence to open up a path":  this is how Alejandro Ginés describes one of the pieces in Plan de fuga. In it, a small, ordinary fence is the bait that trips the mechanism for escaping to somewhere else—a refuge against comfort, a place of one's own. After all, it's hard to find a place in the world.

After dodging all the snares, activating all the mechanisms and passing through all the tunnels, we finally see the forest: an image of the wild and untamed, the unknown, terra incognita, in which we lose our way and make our own paths.

Walking in uncertain places. Wandering through the dark corners of the mind until we discover a territory of escape. EXIT/EXIST. Opening doors, demolishing boundaries, discovering paths.                                                                                        

Jesús Alcaide.

The exhibition catalogue features an essay by Jesús Alcaide, entitled 'Desaparezca aquí. (Mecanismos de evasión, escapismo existencial)'.

Artist Visit: 26th november, 12:30 pm.

Educational Workshop: 26th november, 11:30 am to 13:30 pm.